Andros felt for his leg, but another wave of darkness washed over him. He groaned in agony. A pair of soft, soothing lips kissed him gently on the mouth, and he reopened his eyes.
It was Erin, her face shining like that of an angel in the shaft of sunlight falling through a crack in the roof of what seemed to be a cave.
Andros groaned. “How long?”
“You were out for a couple of hours,” she told him. “Good thing we found you and got that shrapnel out. Either infection would have set in, or the Nazis would have found you. Looks like that microfilm of yours is more significant than we thought.”
Andros was fully awake now, his nausea gone. Only the pain in his leg remained. He looked down to see his thigh wrapped in bloodied strips of linen. His thigh and nothing more. His pants had been removed.
“I was changing the dressing when you woke up,” she explained. “It’s not like I haven’t seen a man before.”
Andros held up his hand to tell her that was enough, thank you. He propped himself up and had a look around, careful to avoid making eye contact with Erin. He was in a small cave, which he was sharing with three horses and a cache of weapons, several dozen Sten guns, ammunition, grenades, and what looked like four hundred pounds of plastic high explosive in quarter-pound bars wrapped in cellophane.
“You’ll have to excuse the accommodations, but it was the best we could do under the circumstances,” Erin said. “This is one of several storage facilities the EOE has in these parts.”
Andros saw daylight at the entrance to the cave, which was screened by a forest of pine trees. “Where are we, exactly?”
“No-man’s-land,” Erin explained as she prepared the new dressing. “Somewhere between Free Greece and the German zone.”
Andros remembered the destruction of the base, the carnage, Doughty. “Free Greece?” he repeated hoarsely. “Our camp was blown!”
“You managed to survive,” Erin replied, carefully peeling the old wrap from his thigh.
The pain came back with a vengeance. “Oh, God,” he gasped. “It kills.”
“Not if you sit still.” She started to apply the new wrap to his thigh.
Andros grimaced as soon as the dressing touched his skin. But his attention was diverted to the distant roar of a low-flying aircraft somewhere outside the cave.
“Reconnaissance plane,” Erin explained. “Searching the hills and valleys for us. Probably in radio contact with ground forces. We’re going to have to stay put and keep quiet until dusk.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Andros replied, feeling another wave of pain coming on as Erin wrapped the new dressing.
“This might hurt a little,” Erin said, applying more pressure.
Andros started to protest, but Erin once again fixed her mouth to his and muffled his cries while her firm hands held his body steady on the outside. He was surprised to find himself responding to her touch, and if Aphrodite weren’t foremost in his thoughts, he might have been disappointed when the pain finally subsided and Erin let him go.
Andros gasped for breath. “What are you trying to do?” he asked. “Kiss me or kill me?”
“Kill you if you don’t shut up,” she whispered. “We can’t be found out. We have to make sure that microfilm gets to the Allies.”
Andros said, “And how are we going to do that?”
“We’re going to make that submarine pickup tonight, while we still have a window of opportunity,” said Erin with impressive determination. “That is, if you’re up to it.”
“And if I’m not?”
“Then it’s only a matter of time before von Berg’s goons get us,” Erin said.
“I guess I’d rather live with the pain than let von Berg put me out of my misery.”
“I’m glad you see it that way.” Erin opened a crate of clothing and found a pair of baggy trousers. “Here, try these.” She tossed them into the air, and he caught them with one hand.
“Turn around,” he told her.
She shrugged and turned her back toward him. “I’ve seen everything you’ve got, Andros. Besides, you might need some help.”
“You’ve helped me enough already, Captain.”
Two painful minutes later, he had slipped the pants on. But when he tried to stand up on his wounded leg, an electric jolt shot up his body. He leaned against the rock for support. Erin was at his side instantly.
“Are you okay?” she asked, looking intensely concerned.
“I’ll manage,” he told her. “So where’s the submarine pickup?”
“Off the coast of Kalamata.”
From where Erin had placed them, that was all the way over in the neighboring province of Messenia, on the other side of the Taygetos range. He laughed in despair. “We’ll never make it in time. Not on horseback.”
“That’s why we’re going to Sparta,” Erin replied. “There’s an SOE safe house waiting for us there, along with false papers and motor transport. Then we’ll drive like the devil up through the Taygetos Pass and down to Kalamata.”
Sparta. You must get to Sparta. There’s a taverna in the square called Theo’s. Ask for the Yankee Clipper. The barman knows… Those were Doughty’s last words. Andros said, “That safe house wouldn’t be Theo’s taverna, would it?”
“As a matter of fact, it would,” Erin replied, a puzzled look crossing her face.
“Doughty told me before he died,” Andros explained as he considered Erin’s plan to go to Sparta. The ancient city and present-day capital of Laconia lay at the bottom of the fertile Evrotas Valley, the formidable Taygetos mountain range rising up behind it. “You realize, don’t you, that to even get there we first have to cross the Evrotas plains in the open?”
“Fortunately, the sun sets early behind the Taygetos, so we should have the cover of darkness by the time we cross the plains.”
“And then we somehow sneak in and out under the noses of the German garrison?” Andros shook his head. “There’s no way.”
“It’s the only way,” Erin insisted, “and the one they’d least expect.”
As Erin was speaking, Andros heard the crunch of boots on pebbles outside. He shot her a worried glance. A black figure filled the circle of light in the mouth of the cave, holding a Sten gun. The hulking giant stepped forward into a shaft of sunlight, and Andros saw that it was the ELAS kapetanios, Stavros.
“It’s okay, Chris,” said Erin. “It was Stavros who found you in a creek and brought you here.”
The picture of a stream in the country came to his mind and then faded. Andros nodded. The big Greek sat down on a crate of plastic explosives. “The noose grows tighter and tighter around our necks,” he reported. “It’s only a matter of time before we join my brother in the grave.”
Andros looked at Stavros and then at Erin. “Michaelis is dead?”
“Kalos did it,” said Stavros. “He murdered my brother.”
“I suppose this means you’ll wage a personal civil war with EDES?”
“Kalos is ELAS,” corrected Stavros. “He is not what he seems.” The big kapetanios began to weep for his lost brother.
Andros glanced at Erin, who confirmed the story with a sad nod. “It happened just before we were ambushed by SS paratroopers,” she said.
Erin then told Andros about Churchill’s hunch about a Soviet mole within the Greek Resistance; her mission to discover the identity of the Minotaur; and what had happened with Kalos before von Berg’s Death’s Head battalion attacked.
When Andros had heard it all, he shook his head. “That ought to shake up Zervas and the Middle East GHQ. But if Kalos isn’t the Minotaur, who is?”
“Maybe our station in Sparta will know,” she said.
“Sparta?” asked Stavros. “What’s in Sparta besides Germans and collaborators?”
“A safe house, a wireless, British agents who can get us to Kalamata in time for our submarine pickup,” said Erin. “You coming with us?”
“I told you,” said Stavros, “Sparta is crawling with Germans and collaborators. One look at me and I’ll be hanged.”
“I’m afraid if you’re seen at all, it will be the end of you,” Erin replied. “I’m sure that Colonel Kalos, if he’s still alive, has already reported your demise and wouldn’t take too kindly to having you seen walking around. Of course, you could go north to your headquarters and try your luck with Saraphis, Siantos, Velouchiotis, and the rest of your ELAS comrades at Petrouli. That’s if you can make it that far and if they don’t hang you anyway. This way, at least there’s hope. You might even be able to clear the name of ELAS by exposing Kalos.”